See No Caribou, Speak No Polar Bears, Hear No Wolves, John Bohner Tries His Best To NOT See Any Nature
I am ashamed to have lived a large part of my life in the state that spawned this idiot. This past weekend Congressman John Boner Boehner (R-Ohio) headed up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on a “hard-hitting congressional fact-finding mission”, AKA: a bullshit Alaskan vacation paid for by the tax payers so he could probably go fishing or something. The purpose of which was to do everything possible to avoid finding facts.
“We’re going to look at this barren, Arctic desert where I’m hoping to see some wildlife,” Boehner told reporters before the trip. “But I understand there’s none there. But I’m still going to look for it. If I find any, I’ll let you know.”
Does he seriously expect us to believe that he is going to find out anything other than “no wolves up here, drill away” when he makes statements like that before he even leaves?
I’m sure he was looking real hard. At the floor, his lap, or wherever else he could avert his eyes to keep from seeing the thousands of polar bears, caribou, birds, musk ox, wolves and brown bears that call the Arctic Refuge home.
This trip amounts to a free publicity stunt for big oil. Boehner and his delegation flew all the way up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, just so they could pretend like they didn’t see anything.
That way, they can start the drilling and guarantee that in a few years there really won’t be anything left to see. Not to mention the fact that even if they pumped out all the oil in the world it wouldn’t be enough to supply growing demand. Drilling for more oil is a dead end exercise in futility. If we want to solve our energy problems, and our climate problems there is only one solution….STOP USING OIL, at least for energy. You want to solve America’s energy problems, and create a whole bunch of new jobs, try some renewable energy.
I am sure that Boehner and his ilk don’t have a long record of voting for whatever the oil/coal/gas puppet masters tell them to…I am sure if you look up their congressional record you wouldn’t find that they almost always vote exactly how big oil wants them too….no I am sure thats not it.
If you live in the areas these people “represent” why not call them up and tell them that you support NOT drilling in a wildlife refuge, and that you would rather have some jobs move into your district, and maybe they could think about offering some tax breaks to a wind turbine manufacturer or something…just a suggestion.
Poo
The results of the vegetable trials are in, and they are looking good. As documented on The Earth Blog I have been growing a few different things in a small raised bed, just to see if I could: we still have a continuous crop of spinach; the lettuce is just going to seed but has served us well; the tomatoes are plumping up nicely and the French beans (or do I still have to call them “Freedom Beans”?) are providing a small, if tasty accompaniment to meals. The pak choi, on the other hand, was riddled with some very specific mite — leaving it looking like a drawer full of doilies — so I won’t be trying that again.
Slugs and snails were a problem, until I realised that the best disposal method was to collect them at night and deposit them in the wild area at the bottom of our street the next morning. Three nights of this and they are gone — all but the tiny ones, which the resident frog (who lives under a pot) seem to be dealing with brilliantly.
So now the experiment has been deemed a success, I am turning over a much larger part of the garden to growing: just over half of the small meadow, which will be replanted where there is more sun. So, bye bye to the bizarrely angled arbor, the rose bushes which caught many a bedsheet in their thorns, and the pear tree which only ever bore two pears a year; hello to two new raised beds which, after some judicious pruning of the ever-fecund plum tree, will have plenty of light to thrive in.
I can’t do it yet, though. First I have to cover the ground for at least six months to kill off the grasses, and then build the raised beds, after which I will need to fertilise the ground. This is where the poo comes in.
At the bottom of my street, and a little further on is a country park, which contains a bridleway. It isn’t that busy, but enough horses use it to make collecting the manure worthwhile — and that’s what I did this morning. As I passed a dog walker, pushing my wheelbarrow and spade, he said, “On a manure run are you?” I didn’t feel so odd after that, although scooping up great dollops of poo while runners went past attached to their iPods did feel a little strange — but in a way I felt a lot more normal than them.
I came home with a barrow full of manure and nowhere to put it, as it needs to rot down for a few months; so knocked up (surely a loaded expression) a little container from scrap wood and leftover bricks, which you see above. This I put the poo in. A few more “manure runs” and it’ll be full: a pile of rich, vegetable growing, promise.
Simple things make me very happy.
Even McCain Doesn’t Agree With McCain Over High Oil Prices
So that video I just posted about the attack ad McCain was running against Obama…seems the internet has made it’s own version.
It would seem that McCain thinks that it’s the politicians that have been in Washington over the last 30 years who are to blame for our current energy problems…not in fact Barack Obama. Good to know.
(in case you can’t figure it out the above ad is not the one McCain originally released)
High Oil Prices, What To Do!?
People hate to read (sorry it’s true) so here are some videos.
What to do about high oil prices, drill offshore bitches!
(note: I love how they sorta use the like “chanting for Hitler” crowd noise, and imply that Obama is single handedly responsible for high oil prices)
However if you are not a moron, you would know that wont work.
So honestly it has nothing to do with how much we drill, the real answer is to STOP USING OIL! I suggest renewable energy…duh.
How To Power The Entire Country With Renewable Energy: Fun With Maps Edition
So with Al Gore calling for 100% renewable energy in 10 years a lot of people might wonder where the heck we are going to get all that energy from (if we are not using coal/oil/gas). Well my friends take a gander. What you see below is where we are going to get all that energy.
As you can see America has some amazing wind resources. Most of the east coast, the great lakes, and the entire middle of the country are EXCELLENT wind resources. Many places in the west and even some places in the south west are commercially feasible sources. The upper mid-west has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind. There is enough wind going through there on a daily basis to power much of this country (if not all of it on some days). The real problem however is not space (anyone who has been there knows there is space), and it is not NIMBY land owners (the ranchers and farmers would love to get extra revenue from their lands) the problem is transmission.
There are few major cities in that area, and even fewer heavy duty low loss transmission lines. To tap this excellent resource the government would have to invest in transmission lines, or make it easy for private companies to do so. We have the technology, we have the turbines, we even have the market forces to make it happen. What we don’t have is a policy that encourages it. American could certainly use the jobs however…
America also has a superb solar resource. Almost every single square inch of this country is suitable for home scale solar. Only the darkest parts of Alaska are unsuitable for home scale solar (even then some solar thermal would work). However if we are talking major solar projects, utility scale in the 100’s of megawatts, then we are most likely talking concentrated PV, and concentrated solar thermal. That means the south west.
Several entire states rate as very plentiful solar areas. Again the problem is not space, or Not In My Back Yard activists (the desert is largely federal land, and empty), it is transmission, and lack of effective policy. Again we have the technology, this would not need a large research push, we have everything we need. We know how to build the collectors, we know how to build the transmission lines, we simply need to do it. A policy that mandates renewable energy sources would mean that the billions of dollars we currently ship off to the middle east, and other politically unstable areas, would instead be going to create jobs here in the united states.
Geothermal is the forgotten player in the renewable energy game. But as you can see almost every single square inch of this country is suitable for home scale geothermal heat extraction. That means that if you wanted (and could afford to do so) you could almost certainly heat your home fuel free from the ground. However if you are really interested in large scale geothermal you would head west, and some places in the upper east, and even a patch or two in Texas/Louisiana. What is not shown on this map is that Hawaii could be the hydrogen production capital of the world if it simply used its ample geothermal energy (cough most active volcano on earth cough) to make hydrogen from sea water. It could also use the geothermal energy is has under it to power itself, making it the only energy self sufficient state (not to mention Hawaii has excellent solar and wind resources as well). Geothermal may be a little lacking in technology, but with the right encouragement from the government it could become an excellent base load generator, again it would need investment in transmission.
Most people when they think of renewable energy do not think of biomass. Biomass, to put it simply, is anything that grows that you can burn. This includes things like left over farm waste, switch grass, wood chips from logging, sugar cane waste and things like municipal yard wastes. It also includes things like pig shit, cow shit, and maybe even human shit. When you get a lot of poo together you can digest it using bacteria and then burn the resulting methane gas. Biomass is great because you can store it up and burn it when you need it.
As you can see there are plenty of places all over this nation that produce a lot of biomass, and this map does not include the potential for human/pig/cow/chicken waste gas creation. With a little rail transport, and a couple of storage areas we would be all set. Biomass is one of the easiest to implement technology because when it comes right down to it, its just burning stuff.
Say it’s ten years from now and we have followed Al Gores excellent suggestion and most of our country is powered by wind and solar with geothermal base load backup in areas that can sustain it. This works well because whenever it’s not windy in one place it is windy some place else, and our high tech transmission system (that we built) can route the power around. However what if it’s a calm day in a lot of places, and maybe the sun is only shinning in a couple places, and we need a little boost, well thats when we fire up the quick start biomass plants and burn a couple hundred tonnes of old corn waste and pig shit gas. Tada! Renewable energy powered country, screw you oil barons.
But wait you say, isn’t burning stuff dirty and going to cause more global warming? Well lucky for us biomass is carbon neutral. All the carbon put into the air by burning the plant waste, is the same carbon the plants sucked up, so you are just recycling the carbon already in the air. Some people even claim that biomass, if done right, can be carbon negative, that is you suck a little carbon out of the air in each grow/harvest/burn cycle. But this has yet to be conclusively proven (at least in my opinion).
As far as air pollution goes, there are several biomass plants in Europe that are sparkling clean, and use a particulate trap to make sure the only things that enter the air meet strict regulations. Here is a video of how some German scientists are using a similar approach to prove that wind/solar/biomass can provide all of their countries power power.
So there you have it, with a couple hundred billion dollars, the creation of a couple hundred thousand American jobs, and a little rethinking of how we run this nations energy grid we could be 100% carbon neutral using only 4 simple technologies. Of course this would be EVEN easier if we had mandates for more efficient electric cars, more efficient construction standards, and more efficient rules for energy use of commercial products, but hey when has America ever done thing the easy way.
Easy or hard, this solution will work. It will work with technology we have on the shelves today. We do not need to wait 50 years for the hydrogen economy to get here, we don’t need to do more studies, we don’t need to wait for anything. What we need is strong government policies, and a large investment in American prosperity in the form of jobs and domestic spending. I
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